i) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to packaging and more especially to a transparent, flexible package, its method of manufacture and an apparatus for such manufacture.
ii) Description of Prior Art
Transparent, flexible packaging in the form of bags or pouches is well known. Such bags or pouches are employed for display and sale of small items employed by the handyman in the home, such as fuses, electrical splices and connectors, and screws, and by the homemaker in homecrafts, for example, buttons and thread.
Typically the bag or pouch contains a plurality of these discrete small items, such as screws, which are mobile within the bag or pouch and congregate in a disordered, random manner in the lowermost part of the bag or pouch when the latter is hung vertically. The discrete items usually occupy only a small volume of the bag volume and are thus mobile within the bag if the disposition of the bag is changed.
The transparent material, typically plastic sheet, employed to fabricate the bag or pouch enables the contents of the bag to be viewed and checked by the purchaser, prior to purchase.
The open end of each bag includes a closure device or arrangement to prevent ready access to the bag and reduce pilfering. Typically the bag may be surrounded by a folded card member which is secured to the bag, which card member has a punched hole by means of which the bag can be hung on a rack for in-store display. Alternatively, the whole bag may be received in a card envelope having an opening in a front envelope wall for display of the bag contents. In such case the envelope has a punched hole for hanging of the envelope containing the bag.
The bag typically has a volume capacity significantly larger than the total volume of the small items. The size of the bag is selected to facilitate handling and to support labelling and promotional material as well as product literature.
Thus, for example, a bag dimensioned solely to tightly contain 3 or 4 screws, electrical fuses or similar items would be inconveniently small for handling and would be unable to adequately support labelling and promotional material or product literature.
This disparity between the size or volume capacity of the bag or pouch and the volume of the small items to be housed results in disadvantages with respect to the display of the items.
Thus in the prior arrangements the discrete small items fall to the bottom of the hanging bag so that they are not well displayed. In addition the collection of the small items together in the bottom of the bag makes the bottom of the bag bulky, thus decreasing the number of bags which can be hung vertically, in a tidy manner, from the hook of a display rack.
In addition, product literature, for example, an instruction sheet, is often included in the bag, and this also falls to the bottom of the hanging bag diminishing the effectiveness of the point of sale display.
It would be advantageous if the small discrete items could be isolated or confined in an orderly, compact, less bulky arrangement in a central zone of the bag for better display, with reduced mobility within the bag, and if product literature within the bag could be isolated from the small items.
One approach to a more orderly central arrangement of discrete, small items is the blister pack which employs a relatively rigid, non-flexible, transparent dome mounted on a card. A housing for the small items is thus defined between the card and the transparent dome. The dome can be disposed centrally on the card, and the small items occupy the space provided by the housing without distorting the non-flexible dome.
Blister packages are costly to manufacture, difficult to open without destroying them, and are not susceptible to being re-used for storage of the small items which are not needed, for future use.